The Artificial Leaf – Renewable Energy – Horizons

Adam Shaw takes a trip to Boston to meet Harvard teacher Daniel Nocera that has actually developed a gadget that has the capacity to duplicate photosynthesis. Even more Horizons …Video clip Score: 4 / 5

25 Comments

He’s been diddling with this for a decade, never made a big one. What’s
wrong? Is it just that it’s not as efficient as electrolysis and PV cells
to do the same thing? I really wonder about Dan Nocera sometimes.﻿

One side cobalt-phosphate based catalyst compound. The other side
nickel-molybdenum-zinc junction. I like all energy challenges since Daniel
Nocera is a person I admire. All this story of artificial leaf sounds
excellent except 1.Nickel, molybdenum and cobalt are not cheap at all; 2.
in the nature a leaf do not last for a long time (typical couple of
months), so probably Nocera’s artificial leaf also will face the big
challenge of relative quick degradation and oxidation. I am not a chemical
expert but probably the fact that one side contains zinc, it is maybe good
and bad at the same time. Like alkaline batteries a large amount of zinc
increases voltage difference between poles, but unfortunately the drop down
voltage once the inside environment starts to degrade it makes the battery
almost impossible to re-use. ﻿

With all the inventions and innovations over the years, where do they all
go? And, even if all the green tech was implemented, the end user’s cost
will not go down, because its only about increasing profits. People don’t
want huge wind turbines, and solar panels on the top of their house. Thats
why they’re allowed on the market. Commercial scale energy is about that
convenience… just plug in to the grid….. The only thing that will truly
reduce the consumer’s cost is something that produces power on site. The
benefits of anything that puts power on the grid will not be passed on to
the consumer except for the benefit of saving the environment. Even if the
cost of producing commercial scale energy was absolute zero… you will
still be paying the same…. but maybe and probably more.﻿

Five years?Wanna a bet?20 Years will pass and i’m absolutly sure this wont
be in mass production or general use and you can start counting the
years.In a year or two fronm now you will not ear any news from this guy
and his invention anymore.﻿

He shows the metallic leaf, and demonstrates it, but then switches to a
solar panel to power electrolysis to make H & O for the fuel cell. Kind of
a disconnect! Why not show producing the H & O from the Metallic leaf!? I
must have missed him saying that they are sill working on scaling it up.
In other words, they don’t have a even a toy setup working system
end-to-end. No calculation was given for the number of sq meters of leaf
and daylight that would be needed to split all those bottles of H2O every
day. People aren’t going to power their electric stove or car from this,
that’s for sure. Convert water heater,stove, dryer etc to natural gas??
Better to heat water with sun, whoops! Need many many sq meters of
sunlight to heat water AND generate power. Cover roofs with this stuff?
Show me the numbers. Solar flux == enerqy per square meter? Do you know?﻿

5 years is probably not realistic. It has to be a lot cheaper, it must last
for a long time and at the same time produce enough to run a house or
whatever. This has not been done all at once, and some big pieces are still
missing. These challenges are tremendous, but governments should really
invest big and hurry these solutions if we want a chance to stop the
destruction of our atmosphere and mitigate the threat of peak oil.﻿